Stronger signals to NE Asia needed on response to provocative actions

AT some point the world in general, and foreign investors in particular, are going to start paying closer attention to the mounting risks in North-east Asia as tensions and military provocations continue to be ratcheted up in the region. And that could only be a good thing.

Wednesday saw yet another potentially alarming incident when a North Korean submarine fired a ballistic missile that flew about 500 kilometres towards Japan and reached its air defence identification zone for the first time, Japanese authorities said. This latest in a series of launches by North Korea raised the level of threat to Japan and others since submarine-based missiles are harder to detect than land-based launches, experts say. It was seen not so much as a sighting shot at Japan, however, as a practice firing for longer-range targets. The incident adds to the several times-daily scrambling of fighter jets by Chinese and Japanese (as well as South Korean) fighter jets against each other's aircraft - plus regular near-misses between aircraft and marine vessels.

All this creates an incendiary atmosphere where, it seems "something must give" at some point. It also suggests that the facade of continuing economic cooperation amid heightened security threats in North-east Asia must surely crumble before long. Investors and businessmen from outside the region would by now have growing doubts about the wisdom of committing to ventures there.